What are some good books on the big bang theory and evolution?

I need some easy to comprehend books on evolution and the big bang. I haven't learned much about evolution or the big bang, so I need something that is meant to teach people who are just learning about the subjects. Not for someone who already knows a lot about physics, cosmology, etc.

For a very solid overview of the workings of the universe you can't do much better than steven hawkings "A brief history of time" (or "a briefer history of time", one just a little more streamlined). And for evolution my favorite is "a selfish gene" by Dawkins, but "The greatest show on Earth" was also very good (try finding it on audiobook, its nice to hear it in an authors own words with his own inflection and emphasis).

Actually you can. Hawking's books are great, they are indeed much about the workings of this Universe and what's in it, some Relativistic ideas (Hartle-Hawking no boundary condition, laid out implicitly even in his new book The Grand Design) about time and the Big Bang that is not in line with current thinking about time at least in multiverse theories, chaotic inflation, thinking in quantum gravity theories (string theory, loop quantum gravity or perhaps other theories like causal dynamical triangulation theory .

If you want to avoid that (for the moment) and want to know why Big Bang theory and not some other model, how we know that it is true more extensively than getting just another balloon analogy smacked in the face after a Hubble eulogy, but a detailed, yet comprehensive narrative about the scientific history of Big Bang cosmology and also you want to know how it works, from beginning to end, the genesis of the elements and the science behind it, then I think Simon Singh's book "Big Bang" is the best I've seen so far. (And I've read quite a few.)

If then you are provided with a solid foundation of Big Bang cosmology and want to get up to date as quickly as possible, I'd recommend reading Brian Greene's stuff. His popular writings are just absolutely awesome.

About the Big Bang, read what's suggested here, but as you do so ask the questions that will help you develop a skill that makes science possible: suspension of judgment until there's an account that's more empirical than a story that echoes Genesis.

Two of many questions that cosmologists have not yet answered:

1. What forces caused some galaxies to change their directions until they are on collision courses?

2. What, besides a need to fill a gap, explains inflation?

When you feel ready to do some moderately difficult reasoning, check out Donald E. Scott's The Electric Sky or Eric Lerner's older The Big Bang Never Happened. Electrical engineers don't need a Genesis story.